How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Jakub Stencel on defining and maintaining organisational culture

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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Jakub Stencel is the recently appointed interim director of Anima International. A refreshingly candid conversation about organisational culture, transparency and its limits, as well as the constant journey of testing and learning that Anima undertakes. 

Jakub talks us through his thinking on culture in an expanding organisation, split across multiple countries and how his first important task as interim director is to assess whether Anima International should continue to exist, or, if other organisational structures could save time, resource and increase impact for animals.

Resources:

00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:02:00:03 | A recent mistake others can learn from
00:06:30:09 | Early days of Anima International
00:10:39:20 | Work culture and transparency
00:18:10:10 | How has this approach shaped the work at Anima?
00:26:01:09 | Importance of small rituals
00:32:50:23 | Building psychological safety
00:35:45:06 | Hiring process
00:46:23:07 | The transparent leadership transition
00:52:42:18 | Vision for Anima International
01:01:05:08 | Biggest mistake of Anima International
01:13:51:05 | Closing questions

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Jakub: Thinking about what's the future of Anima International, because the Anima International as a unit, the idea that we're working together as separate groups, it has to serve animals and it has to be cost-effective way of working. And there are good arguments that it's not. And maybe it's better to dissolve Anima International and work independently. 


Amy: Hi, my name is Amy. 


James: And my name is James. 


Amy: And this is How I Learned to Love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. Jakub Stencel is the recently appointed interim director of Anima International. In this refreshingly candid conversation, we chat to Jakub about organisational culture, transparency and its limits, as well as the constant journey of testing and learning that Anima undertakes. Jakub talks us through his thinking on culture in an expanding organisation split across multiple countries, and how his first important task as interim director is to assess whether Anima International should continue to exist or if perhaps other organisational structures could save time, resource and increase impact for animals. Jakub tidied his bedroom specifically for this episode, so why not treat yourself to the YouTube version of the show to make his labour worthwhile? Enjoy. 


Amy: Hi everyone. We're joined today by Jakub Stencel, co-founder and interim Executive Director of Anima International, an international organisation fighting animal suffering. Anima International runs a wide range of programs and interventions to help animals, such as investigations, influencing industry, policymaking and capacity building. Some of its national branches have over 20 years of history, while others are fairly newly created groups. Really excited to dive into this conversation. So welcome, Jakub. 


Jakub: Hello. 


Amy: I'm going to ask you what is a mistake that you've made recently? And I guess having changed position fairly recently, it could be something from your old position or maybe something as the new interim director. But what's a mistake that others might find useful to learn from? 


Jakub: Maybe something that was a mistake that we are now investigating in Anima International is that we had a lot of discussion about some of the programs. For example, in Poland we have one program about stopping investments of mega farms in Poland because there's a lot of investment, especially from the west, because labour is cheaper. And over the years, probably maybe roughly eight years, we had discussions whether it's effective or not and seeking external feedback and there were mixed opinions. We ran with it, but just this year we concluded that we just spent a few months researching it and thinking and committing or stopping it. So just to save time of being doubtful over those years, I think this is something that will probably greatly benefit our impact. 


Jakub: So maybe the short answer is not if you have some doubts, either dropping them or doubling down and investigating those instead of being in the state of being unsure. We'll probably publish something on this matter when it's ready. 


James: What's the finding? Can you share if you guys are going to double down or drop it? 


Jakub: Some people, including me, were quite skeptical. I think I was on the fence, but slightly skeptical. Some people were more skeptical. But I think after some initial work right now that may change because it's still in progress. I have changed my mind that it's probably quite effective and we should probably continue it. But we'll see. So it seems I was probably wrong. 


James: This is work that's like targeting financial institutions, investors to almost stop them investing in building new factory farms in Poland.


Jakub: It's a bit different approach. It's more grassrooty. It become a thing in Poland quite organically when we are contacted by society to help them out with those kind of investments. And it's more about local oppositions to building those farms. And usually the main motivation is economic or environmental because having this factory open next door decreases property value extremely. But also some concerns are animals. And we see animal topics are more and more prevalent in those kind of discussions. So from very local approach to then tightening the law on a national level. And what's unique about this is politicians care about this more because those people who are affected vote on them. Because it's local people who then vote on the politicians. So they need to pay attention to the people who vote on them. 


James: Of course. Interesting. Good old NIMBYism. People not liking stuff getting built in their backyard. It's quite powerful. 

Jakub: Yeah. 


James: Cool. Leading on from that. It's a question we used to ask people and since you kind of hinted at it, I wanted to ask you as well, what's something that you've changed your mind on with regards to some issue within animal advocacy that you can share, besides this one? 


Jakub: I think I change my mind a lot. But it's more, I would call it updating slightly in some direction. I think very big. Probably something that I see or maybe I worry now more in animal advocacy is that there was this push to be more about institutional change, policymaking and changing industry. And I think it was very good and I support this to focus rather on individuals, on the system. I'm worried somewhat, at least in some countries we work in that there is not enough outreach to people with anti-speciesist messaging. Maybe more about ethical consideration. And it's not necessary in my view to change society or make people stop doing what they do, stop investors investing, stop building farms. But it's more about reaching those people who will be the next generation of activists and investing into this. 


Jakub: I'm not sure, for example, how motivating is the message just about systemic change and how visible are some of the anti speciesist arguments. So I think maybe more this would be something that I think I changed slightly my opinion of. 


James: Interesting. 


Amy: So it says that you were one of the co-founders of Anima. Can you talk to us about those early days of forming Anima and how it might be different from other organisations’ kind of origin journeys? 


Jakub: I think most of our history is very typical for animal advocacy groups that started roughly in the same period, like 10, 15, 20 years ago. Maybe what's unique, Anima International is more a mix of confederation and federation in terms of structure. It may be controversial for some of the viewers, but we like to make analogy to European Union that it's neither confederation or federation has some traits of both. But to explain it maybe easily is that usually when you have companies or groups, they have one central branch and they control subsidiaries or local groups, local national countries. And here it's more reversed in some sense. There is one central body that is coordinated and kind of hired by local groups to optimise for their impact. So this is probably something that is slightly different than some of the groups. 


Jakub: It's, I would call it like very strong form of coalition. But when it comes to groups that make Anima intentional and the founding members are from Poland, Otwarte Klatki, which is open cages in Polish and then Anima from Denmark, then they have very similar origins of not having money, being very activist, being very grassroots, doing a lot of volunteering, you know, just trying to do a normal job and then during night do some activism, building this over years and years. Yeah, I'm not sure if you're just interested about our international structure or more about the history. 


Amy: Yeah, I think just the structure is great. I think as you say, maybe some of those journeys are quite similar to other organisations. But I think probably where it's not doesn't have that central point. It doesn't have that central place that controls the other kind of subsidiaries or branches of Anima. That it does feel more collaborative than other organisations where it has this main base in a particular place. 


Jakub: Yes. Although just to not be unfair to some other groups, like, I don't know, like, because collaborative have this like very nice sound to it that this is very collaborative. So yeah, I don't necessarily think that other approach, other structure can like- is necessarily not collaborative. It I think depends on the internal culture and operations of the group. So I think our approach is quite experimental in some sense. So I would not recommend it to groups. Probably. 


Amy: Interesting. Can you unpack that in terms of not recommending it? 


Jakub: There are some challenges that we need to maybe figure it out on our own. There is less maybe textbooks on how to do certain ways of operating in this way. So it may be time consuming. I'm not sure if it is. I like it. But you never know whether you are maybe just doing something that is better. But then the base rates would suggest that maybe you are just wrong and it's not that you are doing something better than everybody else. You should be probably humble. So maybe we are just fooling ourselves that this is how it works the best. So yeah, it's I think complicated. So far I like it, but it's also possible that we'll not commit to any specific vision. It depends what we will find useful. And it's also always very context dependent. 


Jakub: So what is your country, culture and context? How do you operate? Who are you as activists? We have very grassroots origins, very, you know, bottom up. So basically this is something that fits us as people but maybe it's not as good for other ways of organising yourself. 


James: And I guess one thing that I think we want to spend a bunch of time today talking about is I think some of the interesting, well, particularly interesting things about Anima International is essentially your culture and some of the grassrootsy stuff, some the transparency. But I guess maybe in your own words, how would you describe Anima International's culture or like what are things that you think make it unique? 


Jakub: The problem is that many people I feel have a bit, maybe I don't want to say oversimplified, but it's very hard to describe our culture. Like many people will say, and you'll probably say this, that it's very honest and direct. This is probably true, but it's very hard for me to maybe compare it with other groups. So it's hard for me to say how direct we are in comparison to the average group. I think we are. But yeah, we try to be very honest, very direct. It also comes from what we learned more and more over the time from culture context of Eastern Europe, Central Europe, that Polish people seem to be more direct in many occasions than maybe British people or Americans. So English speaking countries seems to be less direct. So this probably comes to some extent from this. 


Jakub: And probably the most radical thing that people would find in Anima International is very radical transparency. So pretty much everybody has access to anything, whether it's salaries, to policies, to discussions about you or anything like that. It's all transparent. 


James: Say more about the discussions about you. So like can someone see my one to one meeting with my manager or something? What do you mean by that? 


Jakub: Yes, an evaluation. So everything like what you're being told is what is true because otherwise the person who is telling you something is not saying truthful things. So everything is visible to everyone and people really like it, especially when they hear about it. And it's especially useful for leadership. So you can see everything what leadership does. But of course it's, for some people, very challenging when it comes to you. So people are for transparency. We want transparency for government institutions. But of course it can be personally somewhat challenging when it's your evaluation. So people would usually like to have 99% of transparency and 1% just preserve for themselves. But then it's not transparency. It has to be symmetrical if you want to treat everybody equally. So this is probably one of the most radical things that we have. 


Jakub: Probably, if I had to guess, in comparison to other groups, we also try to be direct. But I think it comes somewhat from transparency that you know. 


James: Yeah. What do you think is the benefit of that transparency? Like, how do you see it? Like the changing morale or the way you make decisions or anything. 


Jakub: So I think it increases accountability, it decreases the role of bad faith actors that happen especially in bigger communities. So we had situations and I think every community had it when people were playing their maybe games or being unfair or telling different stories to different people. And I think this is something that limits it. I think in general, transparency seems to be very important in institutions. When you hear, for example, development economists talking about what makes countries strong is usually transparency and accountability for institutions. So I think building organisations in somewhat similar way to society is probably in some sense smart because we want to be robust organisation. I don't find many problems with it, to be honest. I think usually the people who find the most problems are lawyers. 


James: Don't get me started. I've had lawyers at the roots of many problems. 


Jakub: There's research, for example, that when it comes to salaries, one of the best way to make sure that there is no any discrimination in pay is to have transparent salaries and transparent reasoning on why salaries are being set. So there's a lot of this kind of things that I think are quite good. I think the biggest downside is that we try to fight it. But people are like- things being transparent doesn't mean everybody needs to read everything and know everything. On the contrary, it will take a lot of time. But people are very often, especially people who join, are quite curious or interested in things. So they may spend a lot of time just going through some, you know, internal stuff. 


Jakub: But I think it also passes over some time and it's also probably good to spread culture when people can see how we, you know, rate people, what we like, what we don't. 


Amy: How do you deal with more kind of challenging topics? Like, I definitely agree in terms of salaries, I agree in terms of, you know, trying to have transparent conversations when things aren't going well. But there are things that can happen in the workplace that I think should remain private. Or at least the person who is like sharing the information, for example, would not necessarily want it to just be like an open source document that people can read. Is it like 100% transparency and staff know that, or is there some boundaries where you think actually this conversation can remain private if it's about an individual or some, you know, challenging behaviour? 

Jakub: There are limits to transparency for two reasons. One is just cost effectiveness. So we will not spend just, you know, putting everything out there if it doesn't make sense. If you are on the demonstration, we want, you know, record demonstration and put it, so there are limits to it. But if someone will say this is unreasonable, that it's limited, then we can discuss this. Answering your question about complaints we have, we do a lot of things that are quite dangerous if transparent or maybe can be argued unsafe for people. So, for example, complaints, but also investigations. We want to limit the knowledge about the investigations we do on factory farms because it's dangerous for people who, for example, are being hired as contractors on those farms. And it can be, you know, just physically dangerous and legally dangerous. 


Jakub: But there's always information why something is not transparent. So there's more like meta transparency of this is why it's limited. This is who has access. This is the reasons, you can now question the reasons why it's not transparent. But also we have anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policy. And there is people who are selected to have access to those who are selected by all the people in the organisation. And everything there is confidential for the reasons that are being stated in the policy. 


Jakub: Because, for example, if you believe something is not working right, or you're witnessing some unethical behaviour or just suspicion of it, for example, someone being bullied or anything like that, which happens in every community, then it can be very hard to report that if you think you'll be, you know, transparently visible that you are the person. Also very often like victims of any behaviour like that can be gaslighted. So this even makes it even harder. So those kind of things are all confidential. That and there is explanation why and other things like that, then you can question it. But nobody so far had any problems with this. So it's all explained. And also you can be sure that there is, you know, there won't be something about you and you don't know about it. 


Amy: Yeah, definitely. I think that's a really important distinction. I think there's like transparency to make communication and morale and culture within the team really effective. And then there's transparency that I think could be just like major red flags for certain people, especially when it comes to like reporting instances and things. So I think that distinction between what is and isn't available and completely transparent I think is really important. Yeah. 


James: I'm curious to hear more about how you think the directness has shaped Anima's work in terms of, I guess this is one thing that we can touch on later is being more willing to investigate whether the programs are working and shut them down. I think that's, I think as a result of being quite open and critical both to yourselves and to each other. But also does it affect- do you feel like you have tighter feedback loops that people get better quicker because they just get much more candid and rapid feedback? Yeah. Just curious how you think has actually shaped your work. 


Jakub: Yes. To both of those at least this is the idea and I hope so. We are generally a big fan of the idea of psychological safety and there is research coming from organisational science that it's very useful for high impact teams. It was also replicated by Google. One of the best person talking about this is Amy Edmondson. She also wrote a book Fearless Organization when she describes this concept. But there's of course a body of researchers who also developed this and basically it states that the best teams are not taking any mistakes or failures personally. So you don't relate things what you do to your self worth. Simplifying a bit, but this is one of the reasons we implemented it. We want to be more impact focused, spot problems faster or things like that. 


Jakub: So this is the idea of- the examples you gave is exactly what we want to achieve with this. 


James: Do you feel like it's working? Maybe you don't have a benchmark from other organisations, but do you feel like people do improve quickly and you kind of do have these quick feedback loops and other benefits? 


Jakub: I think so, yes. But counterfactually it's very hard to say. Me personally, being inside of the system, I feel like everything is working poorly. It could be so much better. I'm so unhappy with things, but it's very hard to say counterfactually. I think if we didn't have this, I would be probably more unhappy. Very hard to have a benchmark. I think some people who come from maybe corporate world or other places that join the organisation, I think usually have high opinion of it and like it and think it's very good. And some of the stories we hear, especially from corporate world, seems like groups or companies are wasting a lot of resources not having those metrics. But of course it's very hard probably to implement it in company when you are mostly motivated by earning money and people are not sharing some vision. 


Jakub: So I think we are just more privileged to push for more impact, focus approach and more direct approach. 


Amy: How do you think the size of Anima International and the growth of the organisation over the last few years has affected this sense of trying to maintain that culture, maintain that tight sense of what it is that Anima stands for? I think in my view it's like a kind of activist-y culture as opposed to more of like a professional NGO staff in terms of who you hire, how you present yourselves. I think it's skewed quite young in terms of the people that you- that like run your offices and the people that you hire. Has the size affected or do you think it will start to affect how you are able to maintain that culture? 


James: And yeah, for a sense of scale, how big is Anima now in terms of staff and maybe countries? And how quickly has that grown over the last like five years, let's say. 


Jakub: So we are operating in six countries right now and we have around 120 hired people spread over those countries and some international work and more volunteers, probably a few dozen more volunteers. And the question is how the size impacts the ability to build such a culture?


Amy: Yes. And maintain it. 


Jakub: Yes. My feeling is that we are right now, despite growing more aligned with culture and the culture is better ingrained in Anima International, although it's costly, like we need to spend some resources to do it. So there's always a question whether it makes sense. In general, I think we are slightly better on this despite the growth, but my bet would be that it'll be very challenging to the point of extremely challenging, probably when we grow more and more, especially when you add more layers to structure. And it seems this is something that I observe anecdotally when talking to groups and seeing how groups grow. Also some skepticism that you can maintain it from people who are very experienced, who I trust, and also from literature, and that it becomes harder and harder. Right now it's a hill I'm willing to die on. So we'll see. 


Jakub: Arrogant enough that I think will probably continue with our culture for the time being, despite the growth. 


James: And how do you actually kind of shape the culture in the way you guys want it? Obviously, I think when you're small, you can kind of be a good role model and people see that, and then it kind of organically spreads. But when you get to 120 people, not everyone has interaction with some of the original staff. So what kind of processes or things you basically put in place to help it diffuse? 


Jakub: Something that I think is important is just to share context, why we believe this is important, how it will optimise for the results we want to see in the world. Also, I think our culture is something that most people like. So it's easier and quite healthy for people to be in such a culture. So there are some incentives that are personal for people to go there. But how to shape it? I think it's a lot of exposure, discussion, and it's very hard to implement it if you don't have it. Anima International is peculiar in the sense that we had very different cultures when we created Anima International. So we needed to create and then slowly move towards one culture. And the process is still ongoing. But when you have culture, when you build it, the only important thing is that you have it. 


Jakub: And you need to make sure that people understand the context, why you're doing certain things. And what's interesting is that people are very social animals. So when you are immersed in such a culture, you will quickly adapt to it. So I don't think it's that challenging when everybody has a good understanding and exhibits the culture to spread it. So maintaining it, if you have people who understand it and lead by the example, is easy. It's kind of. I don't know, you can probably imagine yourself being in novel situations. Maybe some party, maybe some official dinner, maybe a meeting with politicians, or going to uni and being in a class for the first time. You observe a lot how people behave, what's reasonable, what's expected, what's nice, what's maybe not nice. And you like- we are very malleable as humans. So I think this-


Jakub: I'm sometimes surprised of how people adapt and how quickly without explaining it. The problem is that despite people adapting, they don't. You can easily then ignore the context why it's important. And then when you grow it's harder to explain to new people why it's important and they will slightly move away from it. But I think mostly leading by example, giving context, talking about this and trying to also not waste too many resources. We try to have at least few segments when we have international gathering to talk about it, to give workshop of how we want people to behave, onboard people. Our whole recruitment process is organised around this for two reasons. One, to make sure people understand and consent to what they want to get into. 


Jakub: And the second is to also check if they are comfortable with it and they like it because there's also personal differences that not everybody will enjoy it. 


James: What are the kind of like rituals and stuff? I think something we mentioned before the podcast is I think you guys start meetings saying, you know, what's the mistake everyone made recently? I guess do you have other rituals like that or like how important do you see that relative to some of this? More setting the context of like why you think a direct and transparent culture is beneficial. 


Jakub: Oh, you did your research. I didn't know you know that. Yeah, I think some rituals or norm shaping is important. So for example, recently one person hired said that she was very surprised of some IT person not connected very to programming giving like public criticism of leadership of Anima International and saying that this is really- seems like very bad behaviour or things like that and how the leadership reacts is probably one of the most important things. Like are they welcoming? Are they really grateful? And I think whether you feel they are grateful, I think probably one of the worst things is trying not to be yourself. So if you are now faking that you are grateful for receiving criticism, people will spot it because we are quite good at this. So I think this is very important. 


Jakub: But of course rituals and still- are also very important. So we start the meetings not by the what everybody failed, but how is everybody and how are you feeling? And then we go to the. To the failures. So-


Amy: Some niceties to start. 


James: It sounds a bit less brutal.


Jakub: But it’s not brutal, like this is why I would like to push back. I don't think it's brutal when you have enough psychological safety to share your mistakes and failures and problems that you did. Because I understand people are animals and we all have mix of motivations. But if you really care about animals and we all care, then you should be grateful of pointing things that they're not working and that we are maybe not doing the best that we can. And of course it's very hard to point it. And you should be intellectually humble because our theories of change of animal advocacy are very hard to be sure of. But, you know, you can imagine yourself receiving feedback and feeling bad. But because it's so abstract what we do, maybe you are sending emails to corporations or planning stuff like that. 


Jakub: It's very hard to have this connection to animal that you are helping. But let's say that we are all in a vet clinic and you are now doing a surgery on a dog that you want to help. And we are a team and we do the surgery. And now I see that you are cutting wrong part that can do some organ damage and maybe internal bleeding. And I say to you know, hey, James, you made a mistake. Correct it quickly. You probably maybe would be anxious because you are worried about making a harm, but you would probably be grateful that you are not contributing to the harm of this animal. And it's not about you, it's about we are helping this animal. And correcting and saying this is a way to make sure that we are true to our values. 


Jakub: Because nobody wants to harm animals just because they want to just receive praises or they want to have feedback. That is negative. I think in general, positive and negative feedback as an idea is tricky in this sense because if you receive feedback to be improved or change something, I think it's quite weird to say it's negative in some sense. But also with honest culture and their culture, you need to be honest. So also proactivity in sharing gratitude and saying why you value people is important. You can say it's difficult conversations, but I think one of the benefits, even if it's not helpful for impact of organisation, I think one of the benefits is just it really helps people to be more happy in the organisation because people, you know, we have a lot of social anxieties, imposter syndrome, all this kind of stuff. 


Jakub: It's very hard also to be confident of whether what you're doing makes sense. What I learned as manager over the years is I was shocked how many stories that are negative and how much to themselves and how much people beat themselves in their minds. And then if you're in culture, that I'm probably not doing bad because I would be told so, and if I'm not told so that someone who is not telling me this is actually breaking what we all agreed and consented to with our values. So the person is now doing something bad. I think it liberates you from a lot of problems that are so typical to people who care passionately about those kind of stuff. Of course it can be hard. I'm not saying that it's not hard, but I think it's not just, oh, it's brutal. 


Jakub: I think it can be very compassionate in the long term. 


Amy: Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you think it helps with retention? I feel like one thing I've observed over the years is that Anima staff tend to stay in Anima. Like even in Kirsty's recent change in role. Obviously she's not left the organisation, just moved to a different position. Do you feel as though comparatively to other organisations, maybe this transparent approach and openness to discussing the culture has helped with retention? Comparatively to a more like formal structure?


Jakub: We have so much dirt on people that they are afraid to leave because of transgression,


Amy: Because it's all transparent. 


James: Wow, that's one way to keep staff. 


Jakub: Yeah, it was interesting to me. I think you are right. I have not thought about this some time ago, but we recently shared with grant makers and other people our statistics on retention and people leaving. And generally they're very low, considered suspiciously low. So maybe it's bad, but I don't know. But yeah, we have very high retention and I would say that it probably contribute to this. It's also very hard to say because you cannot compare it counterfactually. Maybe, for example, Poland. In Poland we are the biggest organisation, the animal advocacy. There are not many groups that can absorb people. So probably if you're maybe unhappy in Poland, it's harder for you to find alternatives. So you may stay because as we know, animal advocates really care. So they can withstand a lot of problems just to work for animals, which has its issues. 


Jakub: But at least in the surveys, people are- even anonymous surveys, people are usually reporting high satisfaction in working in Anima International. So there is something to it. I don't want to maybe be too confident saying this is the contributing factor because it's very hard and there's a lot of variables that can play into it. 


Amy: Sure.


James: Makes sense. On the psychological safety side of things, what are the things you do? Because it seems like that's a key underpinning for some of the at least the honesty, transparency and so forth. So how do you actually build the psychological safety in the organisation? Obviously there's some of the things you mentioned, like, you know, if someone gives you feedback, I guess you can role model being like very grateful and being genuine. But is there anything else you guys try to do to try and nurture that within the organisation? 


Jakub: I think I would strongly recommend, for people who are interested, Amy Edmondson work on this to read the books, listen to her talks. I think one of the things that is important showing in literature is this sharing mistakes and failure modes. So telling why you failed, what was the effects on it. And that failing is a process like you have to fail to iterate and be better. You cannot, for example, learn a language without making mistakes in how you speak, how you write. So reshaping failure as well. I think it's also important for us at least to understand because failures are problematic to people because they take it to their self worth, self esteem and try to assess their self value. 


Jakub: So if I say to you know, this text is poorly written, you will probably feel that this person is making a claim about your competence or your worth or other things like that, even if it's not conscious. Because usually people don't have as strong reactions when they see a mistake they did privately. If you now make a typo or something in a document or you've written something that you dislike, you're probably not as affected emotionally as in a public setting. So it's a social factor that you know, people try to read. Is this person now saying that I'm not fit for the organisation or my performance is too low? So I think what is important is separating those two. So there's separate drag off. This is good, this is not. 


Jakub: And if this affects my assessment of you of whether you're competent enough or whether you're qualified, then this is separate track that it's mandatory for me to express it if I have opinion here. So- and also having those cyclical reviews of what do I think about you. So I think it helps people to change the framing of feedback and not try to direct this to your own self worth or assessment. I think good example is, you know, thinking of feedback as just goal oriented. This is about this. I'm giving feedback about this because it can maybe be better, maybe not. You're also always free to discard the feedback. It's not that I have to be confident to say that. Maybe it would be better like this, maybe not. 


Jakub: You are free to discard it, but it's not about you as a person and I'm not making claim about you. I think this is important. So having clear assessment of your value in the organisation, what are you bringing, how happy we are with you. So this is, I think, quite important. 


Amy: The last thing I want touch on in this area is the hiring process. I feel like for me that's another thing that is famously long, I would say in the movement, I feel like most people would know that if you're going for a job, it's like you're in for the long haul. Can you talk about your hiring process and why you think perhaps the lens and different stages of this contribute to giving that person the right introduction to the culture and the way that you would be expected to work within Anima International? 


Jakub: Yeah, maybe. Something that now came to my mind that is important about the retention question that you asked is that also the length of our process probably makes it harder for people to leave because they are selected better, which is not necessarily good or bad. Like I can imagine organisation hiring very quickly. And maybe you just leave because you know, you-


Amy: Wasn't the right fit or something. 


Jakub: But. And it's not bad or good in some sense unless you know, you make people quit the job, then this is. This is problematic. But if people are more flexible. But our process I think for sure increases the retention. 


James: I do think there is some cost to hiring the wrong person. It's like, because there's obviously literally the cost you put into hiring and then if they leave and there's like the gap you have to refill. So I think actually it seems like the adage of hire slow, fire fast definitely seems to be true because the cost of hiring is often quite. Quite major. 


Jakub: Yes. So this is also our priors. This is why it's so long. We also try to set it up in a way that people get to know us. So it's more. Of course there's always game of people wanting to have a job and other things like that. But many people are still probably more in animal advocacy thinking of whether it will work, whether it makes sense for me to work, whether it's good for animals. So we devised it in a way that get to know us better and we also want to know you better. So this is why it's long. It's also long for technical reasons. So our process to be objective, to not have any biases or anything like that is anonymised. So people who score answers don't know who are they scoring and they also randomise. 


Jakub: So if you answer question 1, question 2, question 3, me assessing those questions, I cannot be sure that 1, 2, 3 is from the same person. So there's a lot of this operational things that we do to make sure that it's objective. There's no discrimination. People who oversee the process, our recruiters, they don't- they're like coordinator of the process, they don't score the answers they. And even to the point, in Poland you have gendered words. So for example, you would say a verb like, you know, I attended and you can guess the gender of the person who is the author of the words. So we also feminine all the words. So there's always like woman words to make sure that. So this takes some time for us. 


James: You guys do that. Once they apply, you kind of put it into like an AI thing. And female genders are all the writing. 


Jakub: So now I think it's more and more automated. But it used to be before AI, you know, human labour. 


Amy: A person.


James: Wow, that's great. 


Jakub: It's mostly like replacing those and just checking by. It's still automated, but it's not perfectly automated because sometimes you can change the context. Especially Polish has a lot of these changes of declination and other things like that. But this is one of the reasons the scoring takes some time and it's also split into parts. We’ll maybe change it. Because now we have more and more problems with recruitment process due to chatgpt. We spot more and more extremely similar answers. So some of the things probably will no longer be fitting and we will be thinking about this. We want to test people thoroughly and make sure that there is no discrimination associated, anything like that. And it's as objective as possible. So this takes some time. From our side. We usually have good feedback after the process, even if people are not accepted. 


Jakub: Sometimes very negative, of course. 


James: What's the feedback? Is it like this is such a long time I just spent on this and I didn't even get the job. What the hell?


Jakub: Usually this is the feedback that it's too long. 


James: Do you guys pay for the work tests in the various stages? 


Jakub: Yes, yes. This is what I want to say. Like we will compensate at the later stages people to make sure that their work is. Their time is being valued. We cannot do it on every stage, especially the beginning when there's more people. But then time compounds. So we want to be very sensitive to it. Yeah, usually it's this and usually like people are very unhappy that they're not being accepted. But yeah, it's understandable. We also make mistakes. You know, the problem with algorithmic process is that sometimes it can be very rough and harsh and you can miss some considerations that when people point them. Yeah, it was a mistake on our part. 


Amy: So how long actually are we talking? How long is long? So if I'm going to apply to a position, there's then the multiple stages and then there's like a potentially a probationary period in there as well. How long is actually the process? 


Jakub: On top of my head, I think now it's probably around three months, maybe something like that, maybe a bit shorter sometimes. I don't remember now exactly what is the last processes because I wasn't involved. Sometimes it gets unfortunately delayed by a few weeks because we try to be accommodating, especially at the later stages to people if they have some thing in their life or they cannot make with deadline, we move deadline for everybody. There's trade off of being accommodating and then harming people who are available. So we try to be quite mindful of this. I think the length in itself is not as a big problem as stress and with- associated with the length because you don't know and then other things like that. So this is an issue connected to length. 

Jakub: We sometimes try to do it as much as possible, so be very accommodating. Send people questions, for example, for interviews in advance. At least some of those are mixed with this. Also we give people, especially at the later stages, several possible feedback of what we believe was problematic, what some people who rated the answers didn't like. And we have people applying multiple times to our processes. So despite this, it seems people still want to participate and continue. And then we just skip some of the parts of the process that they did well on. 


Amy: And then there's like a trial and a probation or you're in?


Jakub: We do work trials for a few days and then we do probations for three months. The problem maybe to explain maybe why it's also so lengthy is that we have very open allocation culture and way of working. So it's very hard for us to assess people feats very often and performance because of, you know, you doing things that you believe are important and being very open with mistakes. It's very hard to rate whether people are doing good job or not, confidently. So you need to spend a lot of time and understand what's the base rate of success for the thing you are doing. So for example, if you are failing 80% of your time, this can be a sign of you are not doing well or maybe you are doing great because every task you took had 10% of success rate. 


Jakub: And I think in campaigning and in animal advocacy it's quite common to not be sure of your- whether you're doing good job or not. Maybe you know, we should do 100 protests each with 1% chance. But maybe then it makes sense because the 1% is consequential and will actually lead to some change that we want to. Want to see. Also there's, you know, learning phase. You need to learn a lot and it's. You have to do mistakes at the beginning. So it's slightly hard to assess people ability after a short period of time. Probably we say like one and a half, two years. Then you can see whether people are fit for the role they're doing. Do they have natural tendencies, do they thrive in it? It's also important for people to be generally happy with the work they do. 


Jakub: So we have great people but maybe they're not excited about their role. So then thinking how to solve it is important. So this is why we. One of the variables that we want to focus more on - slightly lengthier process. 


James: Yeah, yeah. And I'm curious, do you screen quite a lot on culture in like the early rounds of the process and then you focus more on like their competencies or how do you kind of basically screen people out if you think you do have a fairly unique culture? 


Jakub: Yes. So we split it like you said, basically. Culture and then competencies and check it. We also, you said like we have a lot of junior people. It's because we don't look at your resumé or anything, we don't care. So if you are very experienced then you should have advantage of being knowledgeable and competent and it will turn out in the, in a stage. But if you are experienced and you are not as good as someone who just, you know, a very young person out of the, you know, school or someone who is from less privileged background that they can, you know, build their resumé then if they are better then we'll hire those people. 


Amy: I guess that can't apply to all positions though. Right? There'll be certain specialisms where like a legal team, for example have to have some sense of qualification and experience. Like I don't know that's applicable across all roles. 


James: Straight out of school, 18 years old, no law degree, come on board. 


Amy: Yeah, that seems legal. 


Jakub: Because they haven't been brainwashed by the work. When you need like a formal qualification we don't have many of those roles. So being a vet for example we will require some of this kind of stuff. But with legal we don't have a lot of legal recruitments. But yeah, some I think URB just checked your competencies and probably will do it. Same similar way if we don't need some formal background. But usually for legal things you do. But for example for you know IT where you need to have. We don't have environment to teach people how to code because we are not IT company. So when we hire developers they have to be very knowledgeable, independent. They cannot, you know, work with their senior colleagues for help. So we just test are they independent? Can they do it on their own? Are they highly qualified? So I think it depends on the process. 


James: So, talking more about the leadership transition with Kirsty moving to president and you moving to interim executive director, she outlined it a little bit in her blog post, which I recommend everyone should read because it's both very funny and very candid. But do you want to say more about why that happened? Because I think some of it was actually you and some others bringing this idea to her that she should step out of the role. 


Jakub: Yeah. She received feedback that some of the things in her are not fit for the current role to be ED. And we work with this and talk about how to shape the organisation to be more impact focused, where to allocate talent. We do it very often within the organisation. It's nothing novel, but for leadership it needed to be announced and it's a bit bigger. We people like, especially our donors will be interested. And also it seems weird for people, probably, to notice that something changed without explanation. So we wanted to write it. But it's basically changing some roles and restructuring slightly in a way that we know that people are the best who do things and also they're the most excited and thrive in the work they do. So Kirsty is way better with stakeholders, with talking to people, with presenting the organisations. 


Jakub: She has background in media, so a lot of interviews, a lot of public facing and this is where she thrives. She's good at speaking and mobilising people. And we also found that more like internal structuring vision for the organisation is probably better fitted to be mine. But it's also not a big change because our structure is very team based. So it's not like very power amassed-


James: In one person.


Jakub: Yes, it's. I think it seems more radical for people externally than it is internally. But we also wanted to make external and internal titles match the roles and how we will build it. And we also had discussion about the future of Anima International and we concluded that I will be the best person to lead it, at least for now. So this is why it's interim. 


Jakub: It's not ED because it depends where the discussions will lead us. 


Amy: Yeah, I think Kirsty's post has really sent some waves through the movement in a very positive and transparent way. I think being so open to receiving feedback because I think a lot of organisations would class themselves as transparent. Anyone can feedback to anyone, but it gets to the top eventually. And then there's like, unless the board maybe has an issue with the leader, but the board aren't in the weeds of the day to day running. And so actually I think often it's very difficult for a leader to accept that perhaps they were the correct leader for an initial stage of the organisation getting on their feet, but now in this next phase they would need to move on. 


Amy: So I feel like certainly from the feedback I've seen Kirsty receiving, it's been a very interesting and quite unique situation where she's been so open to the change and receiving that feedback. 


Jakub: Yeah, we try to build organisation in a way that at least doesn't incentivise things that are not optimal from the perspective of impact. So for example, we purposely don't link salary to titles in the organisation, which is very controversial and maybe not smart in long term, we'll see, but forever pretty much, we have similar salaries in most of the groups and especially international, a group that runs Anima International. 


James: How do you guys do it then? Yeah, if you can expand more on how you guys do the salary structure. 


Jakub: So you get base salary and then it's algorithmic, it's counting your external experience and there is like bonus for it. It counts your experience within Anima International and some other variables, but pretty much those two are the most important. 


James: Where you live isn't the crucial one or I guess, is it? 


Jakub: No, it is. It is. The comparison of cost of living and what's the good salary that we want to align with in every country. It's of course like very hard to make those calls, but we have good enough version that I think fulfils its goal. You get salary based on those metrics and not on your title, which also probably makes it harder to hire very experienced people that would earn a lot. Although we are not necessarily finding this necessarily to be true. But yeah, we're investigating the algorithm. But the idea is that you should be in the organisation where you are the best fit for both personal reasons and both organisational reasons. And we also want to openly say that we appreciate everybody in the organisation and the work and usually the salaries are being set in the normal world by supply and demand. 


Jakub: But. And I would say we are outside of the market. But I think we can maybe a bit tweak it to be more mission oriented to say, you know, you cannot be an organisation without everybody doing their part. So just like being a team, football team, you need goalkeepers, you need offence, you need defence, you need coach, you need people who are dietitians, who are sports people. I'm not sure what's the structure of sport team, but physiotherapists, whatever. 


Amy: Sports people, yeah.


Jakub: I like football, I just didn't play it commercially. This is what I think makes a team. So we also want to highlight it with salaries. Of course we may lose with the rewards, so I don't want to say this is the way to go. And I know it's controversial, I'm a big fan of it and I'm pushing for it. But we may change if it proves to be problematic in future. 


James: I mean compared to when we spoke to Leo from L214, they said they have 100 people all paid the exact same French median salary. I think after that nothing is surprising to me anymore. I'm just like wow, this sounds so reasonable and normal. 


Jakub: They are more radical here. I really like their models. 


Amy: So let's talk about your priorities then. We had a question from Sofia from Hive and she said that Kirsty indicated in her blog that you were promoted partly because you could come up with a vision for the organisation. So in terms of your priorities, what's your process for defining a potentially new or changing vision for Anima? 


Jakub: There's not like big shifts. It just probably I will have maybe marginally better intuition in some sense in what to do campaigning in the coming years. So this will be our big focus on probably think about whether our programs are effective or not less and just focus on what we do and maybe then in few years see whether it made sense or not. We are very scared about end of 2025 for commitments. We want to make sure that we did everything we could. So this is one of the top priorities. Apart from that, something that will probably end at the beginning of the next year is thinking about what's the future of Anima International. 


Jakub: Because the Anima International as a unit, the idea that we're working together as separate groups, it has to serve animals and it has to be cost effective way of working. And there are good arguments that it's not. And maybe it's better to dissolve Anima International and work independently as separate groups. So we need to understand and we had some discussion about counterfactual impact of every single group with Anima International and without it. And we want to try to understand it. And I'm now leading the process. This is also why we named me interim ED. Mostly to the fact that maybe we will stop existing as Anima International in the current form. I think now, after initial work, I'm very skeptical this will happen. There will be some improvements, probably, and some good feedback was raised. 


Jakub: The thing is that we should always return to this question because it's not always sensible for us to think that bigger is better. And I think companies, when they scale, they are operating for profit. But for us, it makes sense to not think about how many people we have and how much of the, let's say, market we have, but more about is it good for animals or not. And in some countries, for example, we talk with some countries that being connected to Western groups, part of the Western world, is very problematic. So we don't work with them as part of Anima International because of skepticism of Western influence in the regions they operate in. And this is very simple example, but also organisational bloat. You need people who do certain things operationally. There's also costs that maybe could be directed to more impactful ways. 


Jakub: So we also set up Anima International that you can in principle, enter and leave organisation as a group, whether it makes sense for animals or not. 


Amy: I guess that ties into the cultural question as well. I always find it interesting when culture is such a big part, but you're working across like six very different trees. Like you're trying to put a. I don't know what the saying is, like a square peg in a round hole sometimes, where it's like there just isn't a way that these different cultures can come to a common way of working just because of those really innate differences. So maybe in terms of that growth and that phase of wanting to expand and trying to maintain that culture, as you say, maybe that's just not possible to maintain. And actually what would be great is getting to them, getting them to this point where they're strong and they have like a strong sense of identity, but actually maybe don't need Anima International as the umbrella organisation anymore. 


Amy: I find that really interesting. 


Jakub: One of the biggest problems and issues that we have in Anima International is just difference of organisations culture. And I don't mean like national culture, although it's probably influenced, but more culture between the groups. And it seems that something is interesting is that many in the corporate world, many mergers fail because of that. And people don't appreciate that the culture is a thing. And it's a different thing because you don't observe culture, you just live in it. One of the biggest mistakes we did that were not humble enough in trusting some of the external research and being more attentive to it and underestimating the problems that are associated with different groups working together that have different cultures. 


Jakub: And we thought even though we knew this research, we thought it's not us because we are not companies, we are animal activists and we under-appreciate this and this made us less effective. 


James: I'm curious to ask something about the dissolving Anima International question again. I think you outlined some of the cons essentially so like organisational blow to cost inefficiencies. What's the. But you said you're leaning towards not doing this. It seems like you will keep it I guess. What are the main arguments that it's like it's been useful for animals?


Jakub: So basically it seems like most of the groups rated counterfactually they are stronger. So this is more like groups stating what they believe despite some bloat and despite some- let's call it brain drain. Because some people have to focus on different things that only national and the main arguments that they would bring is just outsourcing certain things. So making are efficient in ways of for example some of the operational things. So if we have certain ways of doing things, let it be maybe some policy salaries or maybe IT infrastructure. We can now standardise this. And it seems the standardisation is not negative because of too much centralization. So there are wins here. We can also fundraise better. 


Jakub: One of the reasons we created Anima International is that most of the people don't really know anything about countries that are quite impactful in terms of animal advocacy. Maybe not animal factory farming with like Poland. And it's very hard for us to explain this and we in Poland before Anima International spent some time. Denmark also had some good progress on certain things. But it will also a lot of time explain the context of the country, other things like that, seek for donors. Most of the donors in the world are located in the west. So English speaking countries. So now we have less people actually doing fundraising or anything like that, which also saves costs. There is big benefits of people stating of knowledge transfer that is organised. So we always transfer knowledge within the movement and the movement is extremely collaborative and helpful. 


Jakub: But when you have people actually hired to make sure that it's done effectively, it's less random, chaotic. Especially when groups grow and they have their own things to cater to. Anima International was created because we always shared funding from other countries to others. So you know, Denmark was working for already over 10 years when we started. And they always had this mindset that they will give money to other groups instead of increasing their salaries or hiring next person. Because Denmark is richer than many parts of the Europe and animal advocates are in worse shape when it comes to resources. So they always move money. So, for example, Otwarte Klatki, the Polish group started because we received money, some like, you know, a few thousand Euros probably, or maybe even less, and old used cameras from Danish team. 


Jakub: And we did the biggest investigation in history of Poland because of that. And the impact was extraordinary for Denmark to do it. They could spend it on, you know, banners and other things like that. And now because of Anima International, this is also more targeted. We identify needs better, we move money better. There are people who think about it. So it's also less, you know, oh, we have cameras, let's give it to someone. It's more. We have quite nice success in Poland now with fundraising. Maybe we should move this to Ukraine instead of to Poland or other countries like that. So far, groups rate it as quite effective. 


James: Nice. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean, definitely that last point seems very relevant in terms of like a group like Bulgaria is like going to countries there is probably find it hard to fundraise. And yes, money goes much further. 


Jakub: Yes. So can I have questions to you or?


James: Okay, go on. We don't do this often, but sure. 


Jakub: What do you think is the biggest mistake if you had to answer now that Anima International is doing? This question to both of you. 


James: You didn't send us these in advance. 


Amy: You said as part of your process, you get time to prepare! 


Jakub: It doesn't have to be the best answer, but it can be the best answer that comes to your mind right now. 


Amy: I have one. So I feel like it's not necessarily Anima wide. I don't obviously know all of the team members, but I feel like there's something in this sense of transparency and humbleness that sometimes almost goes so far that it ends up being difficult for you to commit to anything. So, for example, we've tried to get Jan on the podcast for a while and he would just say, oh, I don't have anything to offer. And then we try and get you, Jakub, on the podcast and you're like, I don't even know what I would talk about. I don't have, you know, other people have much more insightful and interesting information than what I can offer. You know, what. What would be my comparative topic or something. 


Amy: So I feel like, I think there is something in this sense of you all having this, like, naturally humble setting that actually means sometimes you're like neglecting to talk about things that are incredibly helpful and that you do have a comparative advantage on. Because of that uncertainty and I think you generally skew much more uncertain than other groups. So even just in sharing that, I think is a tool that could be very helpful for other groups that you seem quite skeptical of sharing, based on that sense of your culture. 


Jakub: Jan literally doesn't have anything to say. So.


James: Confirmed. Confirmed. 


Jakub: We'll see. We'll see. Maybe you're right. I think this is very valid point. I will think about it. But yeah, I'm still wondering how interesting this discussion will be for people. It's like very internal stuff, but maybe it will. Hopefully it will. But yeah, I'm still not convinced. 


James: Internal stuff still sounds interesting. 


Amy: Yeah. I think what you're. What you internally have like assessed and picked apart to be like interesting. Whether or not that's useful for others, I think is absolutely is. And I guess hopefully if you found it useful, please get in touch so that we can tell Jakub and Anima generally that what they have to offer. I mean also, just look at the response of Kirsty's post. Right? I've never seen so many leaders from so many organisations right across the board and not actually just leaders. Anyone saying, wow, like, what a moment. It felt like what she said was something we've never seen before. The action of a leader moving and still staying within the organisation. You know, there's no controversy around it. She received feedback, took it on board and stepped to one side. 


Amy: So I feel like even just using that as the example, like, it's absolutely helpful. 


Jakub: Yeah, that's good feedback for sure. Yeah. The Kirsty blog post was funny because we. There was constant feedback to hear. It doesn't feel like it's you- make it more you. And she was just trying to be more honest and more direct. And I think it worked well. 


Amy: Yeah, absolutely.


Jakub: But I agree, it was good post. 


James: I could almost hear her voice as I was reading it. I think. I think it was definitely quite her. Okay, my turn. I don't know if this is the biggest one, something that came to mind. This is from a conversation I had with Kirsty. I hope this is all public or it's fine to talk about. I think it is. Everything is. We're talking about you guys Bulgaria work. And I was a bit skeptical that Bulgaria is actually a very relevant country to work in just because numbers of animals who live there. And she was like, oh yes, but we just found some really great people and we kind of. If we have great people, we kind of hire first and then almost like we figure out the rest later. I was kind of like, I don't know about that. 


James: That seems like maybe fine in some cases. But taking that to the extreme, it doesn't make sense. If you find someone in Trinidad and Tobago, it's like, shit, we just found like ten great people there. I guess I just wasn't convinced. Bulgaria, no offense to Bulgarians, it's just like, wow, this is a huge priority country to work in. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.


Jakub: I think it's very valid. I share strongly what Kirsty said. We are very talent focused, I think even more now than we used to because of the limitation that I think movement is experiencing in terms of campaigning. So maybe some of the most successful campaigners there can be moved. But I think this is very valid point because there is limit to it. Maybe there is some country that is very saturated and there is not much that we can add and you can have same discussion or should we just start something because there are people who are cool. Seems questionable. So I think this is valid. I think our priors here are strong. I think with Bulgaria, we are happy that we did what we did. It depends to check how much we disagree. 


Jakub: It would be interesting to see specific countries and our reasoning and then question it and see how much we disagree. I think there was also good argument not only about people, about the campaign they do, and also about trying to maybe slightly move Bulgarian politics toward being more pro EU revision. We started just before, I think year before the 2023 revision work that failed. But the idea was to focus a lot on this and try to slightly move the country toward this. And it's important enough agriculture country in European Union. And I think with the changes of European Union, I think we are slightly more sympathetic toward working in small countries that maybe are not the biggest industry because you know, you will have more countries banning something. 


Jakub: There is good argument that it will increase the chances of EU being pro changes when it comes to animals. And also you can move the business now there to also lobby for the changes because they will be outcompeted by the states that don't have those changes. So, for example, I'm very happy what is being done in Slovenia by Samo and his team. They're not part of Anima International, but they are great people who started and they want to also work toward banning cage farming in Slovenia, which is very small country. But it seems there is enough momentum that it's possible and it's easier to do it in such a countries. And then you have another state and maybe another state. 

Jakub: And I think even if it increases few percent chances of securing their welfare, I think with just few people hired, I think it's probably worth it. Especially because of the Brussels effect. So how much economy and market of European Union affects the world because they want to access this market because of wealth here. So this seems to me a good bet to take even if it's long term. 


James: Yeah, yeah. Well I think some of the thoughts I had was like yeah, maybe I was a bit less convinced on like how valuable Bulgaria would be in convincing the EU versus like should we just like put more effort in like France, Germany, Spain who are like in terms of like population and like political weight a bit more powerful. But I guess the other thing on Bulgaria was I think that the main focus of the work is on dairy calves. And I think Kirsty was more like okay, yes, this is like precedent to like have someone and move on. I guess I'm like was a bit unsure on things like that. I don't know what was your sense in terms of like if it was like banning cages, it's like great, but do you kind of see like the. 


James: I don't actually know what the exact dairy kind of ask is, but I guess I was also a bit unsure on that on the campaign as well. 


Jakub: The idea was for the team to work on it because it was part of the legislation of the EU proposed changes. So it's part of it. It seems that in such a country it's easier to get momentum, get politicians rolling. Industry seems not to be as opposed or maybe some parts of industry seem to be somewhat positive. Building on that as a new group momentum and learning how to do corporate outreach, talking to big companies that usually see us like as hardcore enemies to politicians. Saying that, I was one of the few people who was very unhappy with that decision. I think I would if I were them focus on implementation of cage free policies. And this was my recommendation. 


Jakub: But the team gathered thorough feedback from within Anima International but also externally from people who are experts in policy making EU and they make this call. I think it was a mistake. I hope I'm wrong, but this is how we roll that you have ownership and you can make a call about your area of work and then you're accountable because you know being- sitting on the top and saying people what makes sense or not seems like a very limited approach. So there was disagreement. So I'm in your camp. So I agree this is a mistake that Anima International does, but I cannot do anything about it.


Amy: Even at the top. 


James: Yeah. I mean, in a way it's quite cool that yeah, you're like, I disagree, but you made your choice. So like, if it works, great. If it doesn't, then I told you so or whatever. And we can talk about that later. Yeah, in a way, a lot of the stuff I think you guys talk about reminds me of maybe because I've just finished the Netflix founders biography, but this whole idea of freedom and responsibilities, like how the Netflix culture is, it's like you have lots of freedom on how you do your work and how you achieve your goals. And therefore all the responsibility also weighs on you because you have the freedom to do it. And it sounds like that's kind of what you go for as well. 


Jakub: Netflix describes well what we also want to achieve. And I think there are good reasons to work in such a way. I think the main premise for people maybe who don't know behind Netflix work is that if you have people who are motivated and passionate, it's probably bad to micromanage them and put a lot of constraints on them because it's not good for the goal of the company. In their case, I think it applies fully to all environments that is characterised by so called knowledge work. I think many of the management practices come from more like labour intense work. So for example, being in a factory line where you can operationalise, standardise and it's very repeated process with lot of. With little uncertainty. And in knowledge work, it's different. You need to very often approach each problem differently. 


Jakub: And I think for animal advocacy, the case that it's uncertain, it's stronger because we don't know how to liberate animals. Nobody did it in the history of the universe as far as we know. So basically we need people who are motivated, passionate and have a lot of independence in making the call. Of course it's tricky. Interestingly, it seems like the- which was very shocking to me when I dug into those kind of management styles is that it was, I think pioneered by German military like two centuries ago or something. There is- it was very interesting because they also had norms and rituals about independence and context and disagreeing with generals. So it's not like chain of command. It's this is the objectives, this is what we think you should do. And you should take this bridge to cut supply lines of the enemy. 


Jakub: But then what happened very often is that people go to the battlefield and they see that, okay, we understand we need to cut supplies, but the bridge is heavily guarded. Or maybe they now change the objective, change the supply line somewhere else and then you should be able to descend if it makes sense and do things that still secure the objective, but do it differently. So it seems like I was reading about it, I was shocked because for me always it was strict chain of command and military is like archetype of those kind of things. But it seems that it's even in those kind of settings and it seems to be working. I mean, I'm not sure what's the management style in military is now, I'm not that interested, but it's generally interesting for people who say it's not possible. 

Amy: So it seems like a good way to segue into some recommendations. We've obviously had a couple of book recommendations there that we'll put in the show notes, but is there anything else? We'll also link Kirsty's blog post, but is there any books, podcasts, blog posts, anything that's helped to guide your journey up until this point? 


Jakub: I think I would recommend to most people the Fearless Organization by Amy Edmondson on psychological safety and why it's important. I think people underestimate how much our status in the group matters and there are cases of people dying because they were slightly uncomfortable raising a point in a group setting. So I think if this is true then we should expect that it influences us as well. Yeah, I think there's more and more research saying that there are some dangers with psychological safety that probably also good to check, but I'm not familiar with those. I think most people probably shouldn't think about building organisations and culture and things like that. But if you're interested, I think Netflix book is No Rules Rules, so powerful, are indeed quite good. We also heavily took at the beginning of our existence from book called Swarmwise. 


Jakub: It's how to do organic grassroot-y, open allocation organising. I think this book probably will be very useful for groups that don't want to get let's call it professional. They want to be very dispersed without central body. This is a very good book on how to do it. It's from the founder of pirate movement in Sweden which made a lot of success without having any funding in comparison to big established and wealthy political parties and then spread to other countries. Yeah, I think that for me one of the best still podcasts is not unfortunately yours, but 80,000 hours. 


James: No, no, you are now leaving the podcast. I'm sorry.


Jakub: It’s fine. If you will not emit the episode because of that, but I find 80,000 hours very good. Probably most people don't need to listen many episodes, but I think there is a lot of value in listening to experts in a very deep dive for many hours that I find useful. Also animal advocacy things useful but maybe more basic for audience here. Although for example the episodes with Jonathan Birch about animal sentience or Megan Barrett about insect sentience, those are I think extraordinary quality and insight that are I think very useful and important for all animal activists. There was researcher specialising in building good societies from India and he was describing good institutions about accountability, transparency and I think those kind of things. There's a lot of overlap and things that we can borrow from other sorts of knowledge areas that I think are very useful. 


Jakub: So I would recommend people to this podcast apart from yours. I will probably get emails from your fans.


James: I hope so. We're going to start campaigning against you. Yeah, we're making a website and be like this guy hates our podcast and covered in blood and everything. 


Jakub: Yeah, that's what I always expected that you have those fanatical fans that probably have shirts with your faces and go to conventions. 


James: I hope so. I don't think we do, but maybe one day. 


Amy: Gosh. 


Jakub: I would like to recommend people. It's maybe self serving but our blog at Anima International I think we try to post some of our thinking there from time to time or things that we think can be valuable for the movement. We had very good post by Keyvan Mostafavi about animal suffering and aggregating it and trying to not look too much into just number of animals killed because it can be dangerous for animal advocates, which I think is very useful and was also very impactful within Anima International. There's one of the top researchers on organisation science that seems to be quite evidence based and quite good at voicing uncertainty. So I recommend Robert Sutton. This is the name of the researcher. He, I think, writes a lot of books that tries to give good overview of what works in the organisation and what doesn't. 


Jakub: So for people who want to maybe professionalise or scale like looking at the science is useful. There's also very influential book for small business owners that I think probably is good. It's called E-myth Revisited. E I think dash myth Revisited. It's a quite interesting book that explains how people should think about building their organisations when they start doing so. 


James: Nice. Okay, that's a wealth of resources. We'll link that all below. I think maybe I'll read this Powerful by Patty McCord. Keep going with my Netflix trilogy. Yeah, they're very impressive. Final thing, I guess how can people get either more involved with your work or learn more about you. You mentioned the Anima International blog. I'm sure social media. You guys hiring? Anything else you want to plug related to Anima International? 


Jakub: Yes. So following us on social media is probably the way to go. You can check our website for any roles, but most of the hirings we do is usually in countries we operate. So we don't have a lot of international roles. And I guess most of the speakers here will be, sorry, listeners here will be from those kind of communities and we are not that active internationally. We just focus mostly on work in the national countries because this is our theory of change is defined. But also you can write email to us if you want to be volunteer or anything like that. It's all stated in website. So yeah. And then feel free to reach to anybody from Anima International to channel with questions. Cool. 


James: In that case I think we can wrap up there. So thanks so much Jakub for coming on. This is super interesting. Lots of things to dive into and if anyone running or involved in organisation, lots of interesting cultural stuff. So yeah, thanks. Thanks for watching. 


Jakub: Would you say if it's not interesting?


Amy: If it doesn't go live, you'll know.


James: Yeah, yeah. If we. If we bury it maybe. But I would tell you. 


James: I spent an hour 45. It's got to be good. No, it actually was very interesting. So thank you. 


Amy: Yeah, thanks Jakub. 


Jakub: Thank you very much.